Is motherhood better in France?

I talk a lot in this newsletter about how Western post-industrial motherhood compares to motherhood in small-scale societies, especially nomadic foraging societies. Contrasting certain general features of these respective societies can be a useful tool for identifying how we might do things differently in our own communities. But I must also admit that these kinds of generalized comparisons flatten the extraordinary diversity of motherhood experiences that can be found among different Western societies as well as among different small-scale societies.

I am thinking about this a lot right now because I have just landed in Paris, France with my two children, ages 2 and 4. We are staying in France for a month to visit my husband’s family. I met my husband in Paris when I was 23, and we lived in Paris together for 8 years before having children, but I have never experienced France with my children, and I am very curious to see how it feels.

We have only been here about 24 hours but I am already acutely aware of some notable differences in the French attitude towards mothers and children.

First, it’s abundantly clear to me that this is a country that values children, and by association, their exhausted parents. After a 12-hour flight from California, we arrived in Paris Charles de Gaule airport at 3 AM California-time, none of us having slept more than an hour on the plane. I was mentally bracing myself for a series of epic toddler meltdowns as we went through the grueling process of clearing immigration and customs. To my dismay, there was indeed a very long, very slow-moving line at the immigration checkpoint. Because we had been slow getting off the plane, gathering our millions of scattered belongings (we had brought a full kindergarten’s worth of activities for the kids to keep them quiet and entertained on the flight), not to mention our sleeping children, we were the last to arrive in the line. No sooner had we resigned to our fate than a French immigration officer picked us out from the line and said, “suivez-moi.” We were ushered to a special line for families with young children and cleared immigration in under 10 minutes! I can tell you that there is no such service coming back the other way in SFO. It’s a small but clear indication of how French society understands and appreciates parenthood (and how everyone, including the non-parents who we cut in front of, is better off if the kids are not screaming from exhaustion for an hour in line at the border).

Second, I’ve noticed that the French are not shy about scolding my children on my behalf, and I love it. I can imagine American parents being put off by this, but to me it’s an indication that child-rearing is viewed as more of a collective responsibility than it is in the US. Back in California, if my children are misbehaving in the grocery store, the store employee will typically address me, the mother, with something along the lines of, “ma’am, can you please stop your kids from running in the store. I am afraid they are going to break something.” In France, the store employee is much more likely to address my children directly by saying something like, “Children, stop running and listen to your mother.” This might seem like a small difference but to me it’s massive. The latter approach implicitly acknowledges that I am doing my best to keep my children in line while shopping and that I could use a hand, while the former approach condemns me as responsible for my children’s misdemeanors. The latter accepts that children are a collective responsibility while the former implies that they are my private charge.

My French sister-in-law shared a great story with me along these lines. When her oldest son was 3, she was taking him and a friend home from school on the public bus. They were fighting and misbehaving. She was trying, without success, to get them to share and be calm. Suddenly, the bus driver pulls the bus over on the side of the road, stops, and gets up. He marches back to where my sister-in-law and her son are sitting and addresses her child by name saying, “stop horsing around and listen to your mother!” That shut him up directly and the rest of the ride was smooth. My sister-in-law says remembers being embarrassed but also grateful.

The final thing I have noticed in just these first 24 hours is how much more independent children are here, and how much more trust parents seem to have in their children’s capabilities: both for young kids and teens. It’s normal to see kids as young as 3 or 4 navigating the city streets on a scooter while their parents walk nonchalantly behind. After we arrived in Paris, my children’s older French cousins eagerly volunteered to take the kids to the local climbing wall later this week so my husband and I can have some time alone. My first reaction was to say no. My kids can be a handful, and they are not all that familiar with navigating cities. But then I thought, why not? The cousins are no less capable of helping my children navigate the city than I am, they seem genuinely eager to play with my kids, and my husband and I would certainly enjoy some time to ourselves!

These are just some initial impressions. There are many other things about French culture that I like less when it comes to parenting. For one, there is a lot of pressure on women here to conform to a certain ideal that can be toxic. France also has one of the highest disparities in leisure time between fathers and mothers, and there are some culturally-entrenches forms of misogyny that I was all-to-aware of living here as a young woman that feel less explicit in San Francisco (although I’m sure they still lurk beneath the surface). Nevertheless, I am excited and curious to further explore the country with my children, and to learn from my friends who live here, most of whom are now mothers, about what it’s like to be a parent in Paris!